Course XLVII - Teaching 29: Saint Francesca Romana (December 23rd, 1956)

We cannot conclude our Retirement not considering our People and our Eternity, from which we get consolation and assistance, and above all, those guides that are with us and help us go quickly across the bridge.
Today we commemorate our Saint Protector, Francesca Romana: so her image and virtues on Earth shall allow us to her companions in the Invisible Tables of Heaven.
The life of protectors on earth becomes a pattern to imitate; their virtue left behind them a trail of magnetic power, which gives us strength to imitate them.
The authors speak of events and persons that were with these Saints, but lose sight of the basic and central point of their lives: what is really and entirely interesting. These authors do not penetrate into the wonderful flower that has bloomed there.
We should seek in Saint Francesca how she developed the central virtue of her whole lifetime –a virtue giving power and life to the soul, and projecting her all over the souls to vivify them. Chastity was primordial Francesca’s virtue; she was chaste mentally, morally and physically. It was a divine gift.
In her life, every event becomes transcendental because of this virtue. She reached such a high level of renunciation by means of chastity. Her Renunciation was absolute to anything that a being can possess on this Earth.
Saint Francesca belongs entirely to Cafh, because her Renunciation shall be practiced in the future times. The entire power of her Renunciation lies in her chastity.
Let us image the martyrdom of so chaste soul that is eager for purity, and tied to the marriage law.
She was nine years old when, looking at the sky, she said to her mother: “I am the wife of Christ”, but the worldly beings feel that these are childish things and do not pay attention. So, without her choice, one day she is married to an almost old man, who ignore what is the spiritual life and knows totally the evil and vice of the world.
This is the first Francesca’s martyrdom: When her parents through her purity on the human mire. Her parents were unaware of the secret virtues of the child. After her death, an old servant stated that, being very innocent still, desperately she refused to be touched. Her parents laugh at these signs of purity. But the human destinies say that she shall reach the full Renunciation by following this path.
She is seriously ill when at the age of twelve or thirteen is thrown to this human destruction. None knows what her ill is; her husband’s presence is deadly for fear. But a soul, Vanossa, her sister-in-law, understands her. She is her companion in the spiritual life: Vanossa says to the husband not to come near Francesca; so, she shall not pass away.
After this marriage trouble, Francesca gets better, but experienced a devouring fever. One night, Alexis, the Roman saint, appears and says to her that she must make a sacrifice: “God wants you to be a mother and to carry the heavy cross”. The following day, Francesca says to Vanossa that she feels well, and later the two go to the church to thank God.
Later she gives birth to her first child, and her feelings purified by her motherhood. In spite of her spiritual director’s sayings that his duty is to be married, this is martyrdom for her, and she spits blood every time that her husband comes near.
Marriage is sin, however holy it is, this is her feeling, but from this martyrdom emerges her strength to be mother of all beings.
Then she pours her love on Christ’s members in pain: sick and needy persons.
Her great desire is to devote to God in certain distant place, but she understands that God wants her to heal the Humanity.
She starts her mission for the souls. She heals all with the oil of her lamp, which still is preserved today.
In spite of her struggle to come back to the purity of her childhood, the Lord has chosen her to pay the sin of other beings which this marriage sin. Once Christ said to her, “I have chosen you to pay for all those that do not behave, and, since you are my Wife, you shall be mother of all”. Everything starts collapsing around; two children die, and another son is taken by political enemies of her husband as a hostage.
But with a great inner energy, she considers all taken out of her as the Will of God. And God, in her sorrow, gives her an angel as a companion for life. And it is her little boy who appears from the hereafter and says to her that he shall send a companion. It is then when his son and his battered and ruined husband return.
People call her “Angel of God”, and prostrated, they kiss the ground as she passes. And in ecstasy, Christ converses with her and says that, if in this Earth she is mother and wife, in Heaven she is totally His, because she carried out His will”
Many times, when her companions see her in ecstasy say that her body was like that of a virgin. As his husband is old, she feels that her mission is over, but he is stubborn and claims for the Wife that God gave him.
Her confessor instructs her to carry out her duty, but every time that he touches her, her mouth bleeds profusely.
These are years and years of martyrdom. God does not allow her to die. She has to be the purest image of renunciation and chastity. Finally, her husband fires her, since being of no use as a woman, but she is a whole saint.
This day she experiences ecstasy because nothing can separate her from her lofty desire. Seemingly she says, “I have suffered much. In all my lifetime, my dream was to gather virgin souls around, and now I achieved it”.
“I want nothing to touch them; take care of the wonderful flower that the Lord has given you. Beautify this flower with the inner life of chastity and detachment, and above all, with renunciation, which is the crown of every virtue”.
We have to remember her especially when we are tempted; I do not refer to gross temptations, but to wrath, gluttony, sloth, or negligence, and then Francesca’s strength shall reach us at once. God granted to us many gifts, but the greatest gift of all is that of the power to remain pure and chaste, and to say: “ego sum Sponsa tua”.
You all know how the wealth of this gift, –a sure token of our Renunciation and Observance. Let us imagine Francesca lending us her hand to go cross the bridge from here to the Eternity.